Musselburgh Museum will re-open on 29 August with a new exhibition entitled ‘The Battle of Pinkie Cleugh: Then & Now’ being set up by Pinkie Cleugh Battlefield Group in conjuction with and in advance of the new Battlefield Trail, which will be open to coincide with the annual commemoration of the battle.

           The Battle of Pinkie Cleugh, took place on September 10^th 1547 in the open country between Inveresk and Wallyford.  

It was the biggest and bloodiest battle ever fought in Scotland and was the last battle between the separate kingdoms of Scotland and England. 

Pinkie Cleugh marked the culmination of Henry VIII’s effort, later called the ‘Rough Wooing’, to coerce marriage between the two child sovereigns, Edward VI of England and Mary, Queen of Scots.    The immediate outcome of the fighting was a disastrous defeat for the Scots – more than 10,000 of whom were killed, compared with a few hundred English dead.  But when the war ended three years later, Scotland remained free of English power – and Mary, in due time, married the King of France.  The two British kingdoms were peacefully united when Mary’s son James VI inherited the English throne from Elizabeth I, in 1603.

  The Exhibition will display accounts and images made by eyewitnesses of the battle, combined with modern archaeological studies, to show the story of the battle in the landscape of today.

   A copy of a book, published in London in 1548 by William Patten, with his day-by-day diary of the invasion expedition is being loaned by the National Library of Scotland.  Patten’s work includes a series of woodcut plans of the battle, and there are images also in a remarkable – but rarely seen – ‘roll map’ from the Bodleian Library’s collection, which is reproduced at full scale. The painting is thought to be a copy, or more likely the artist’s preparatory sketch, for a ceremonial painting honouring the Duke of Somerset. It may have been intended for display in the Duke’s new palace beside the Thames, which was then nearing completion. The image constitutes a strip-cartoon, covering five scenes from the conflict over three successive days.  The artist has included significant mapping detail from the coastal strip between Prestonpans and Leith, and there is a detailed perspective view of Leith itself, viewed from just offshore.
         

Other items on display will be bullets, cannonballs and other battlefield artefacts recovered by archaeologists in recent years. Additionally a replica 15 foot long pike and an accurate scale model of a Scottish soldier of the day, models of the battlefield terrain – and of the English warship, known as the ‘Subtle Galley’, which fired the opening shots in the battle. Costumes used by the actors in the successful Queen Margaret University community drama about the battle will give some indication of the dress of the day. 

The Exhibition will be open from 29 August until early December in Musselburgh Museum, 65 High Street, Musselburgh, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays from10:30 am to 4 pm.  Admission is FREE.